June 2015

06/11/2015

It’s on again with Oliver and his beloved, after a months-long fallow period in which she turned her attention to another boy. We have no idea what changed (O attributes it to his mad soccer moves) but the object of his affection asked him this week to once again be her boyfriend. She has not dropped the other boy as a result, we are told, but this is seemingly of no concern.

As a refresher, Girl is in Grade 2, and O is in Grade 1. This is part of a pattern. As early as three, Oliver was well aware of the allure of the older woman. At parks we would catch him gaping at six-year-old stunners, awed by their power. Even then, he had good taste. The girls he liked then, and now, have never had to be little Barbies or match their pink with more pink. Instead, they have had to rock their outfits and look a little undone. They are blessed with just the right kind of confidence, the kind that saves them from caring what other people think. These girls dart around the playground, usually trailed by a band of followers. They are neither overly nice nor overly mean. Heartbreakers.

So, yeah, Girl.

Last night before going to sleep, O asked me to tell him one of his favourite stories, the one where I’m 15 at the Dairy Queen with the guy I like: Jeff, who just happens to be 17. Jeff buys me a milkshake, brings it back to the table and sits down. I decide that the best strategy for making him love me is to bat my eyelashes. This is not as easy as you might think, because you don’t want to do it too often or you look crazy, and do want to look like you’re listening even as you’re batting. It’s a lot to coordinate—too much it turns out—since I end up pouring my milkshake down my shirt without even knowing it.

Ahahahaha! Poor mom! (Not so poor; Jeff became my first real boyfriend, and a good one at that.)

It’s time to go to sleep. No it’s not, says Oliver, not until I tell you a story. Fine.

“There’s this boy, in Grade 1, and this girl, in Grade 2, and they decide to be boyfriend [Oliver Dan, for some reason] and girlfriend [you know who]. So the boyfriend takes his girlfriend to a restaurant. She wants crouton salad with corn and tomatoes. He wants a hamburger. But the problem is that as the waitress is taking their orders, she sees how amazing and handsome Oliver Dan is, so she gets jealous and wants to be his girlfriend, too. But she can’t so instead she gets her vial of deadly poison and puts two drops on each of the boyfriend and girlfriend's meals, the salad and the burger. But what she doesn’t know is that Oliver Dan is really Cat Man and his girlfriend is Marvel Woman and they have superpowers that include not ever being able to die from poison. So the waitress was sad and they were alive.”